EXHAUSTED PROGRAMMER NEEDS HELP!!!

Question

I have no idea why my program runs so darn slow. It runs at a snail's pace on the unix machines I'm running on. I'm developing on a Windows box using IntelliJ IDEA and text-transfering my files to the unix machines to compile and run. I'm runing on a data set of around 30MB distributed in 40 files. I am so tired of looking for the problem. Others have done the same program and their's works in 5 minutes or less. Mine is taking around 2 hours!!! Please, if you have a clue and a heart, help me! Code below.
//* Parser skeleton for processing item-???.xml files. Must be compiled in
JDK 1.4 or above. */
/* Instructions:
This program processes all files passed on the command line (to parse
an entire diectory, type "java MyParser myFiles/*.xml" at the shell).
At the point noted below, an individual XML file has been parsed into a
DOM Document node. You should fill in code to process the node. Some auxiliary methods have been written for you. You may find them
useful.
Modified by:
Will
import java.io.*;
import java.text.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.FactoryConfigurationError;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import org.w3c.dom.*;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import org.xml.sax.SAXParseException;
import org.xml.sax.ErrorHandler;
/* Process one items-???.xml file. */
    static void processFile(File xmlFile) {
        Document doc = null;
        try {
            doc = builder.parse(xmlFile);
        catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.exit(3);
        catch (SAXException e) {
            System.out.println("Parsing error on file " + xmlFile);
            System.out.println("  (not supposed to happen with supplied XML files)");
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.exit(3);
        /* At this point 'doc' contains a DOM representation of an 'Items' XML
        * file. Use doc.getDocumentElement() to get the root Element. */
        System.out.println("Successfully parsed - " + xmlFile);
        /*Open the output files for each relation****************************/
        PrintWriter itemsFile = null, usersFile = null,
                bidsFile = null, categoriesFile = null;
        /*Open files for writing each of the txt files******************/
        try{
            itemsFile = new PrintWriter(new BufferedOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("Items.dat", true)), true);
            usersFile = new PrintWriter(new BufferedOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("Users.dat", true)), true);
            bidsFile = new PrintWriter(new BufferedOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("Bids.dat", true)), true);
            categoriesFile = new PrintWriter(new BufferedOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("Categories.dat", true)), true);
        }catch(FileNotFoundException e){
            System.out.println("Error trying to open an output file: " + e.getMessage());
            System.exit(0);
        /*Parse content for each relation in turn********************/
        //Write to the Items.txt file
        NodeList itemNodes = doc.getDocumentElement().getElementsByTagName("Item");
        String itemID = null;
        Element[] categories = null;
        NodeList bids = null;
        NodeList eBid = null;
        NodeList bidders = null;
        Element tempElement = null;
        Element itemElement = null;
        Element thisBid = null;
        for(int i=0; i<itemNodes.getLength(); i++){
            //Get the item Element for this iteration
            itemElement = (Element)itemNodes.item(i);
            /*Write out ItemID**************************************/
            itemID = itemElement.getAttribute("ItemID");
            itemsFile.print(itemID + colSep);
            /*Write out Name****************************************/
            itemsFile.print(getElementTextByTagNameNR(itemElement, "Name")+ colSep);
            /*Write out the Currently element***********************/
            itemsFile.print(strip(getElementTextByTagNameNR(itemElement, "Currently")));
            itemsFile.print(colSep);
            /*Write out the Buy_Price element, if it exists*********/
            Element checkNode = null;
            if( (checkNode = (getElementByTagNameNR(itemElement, "Buy_Price"))) != null){
                itemsFile.print(strip(checkNode.getFirstChild().getNodeValue()));
            itemsFile.print(colSep);
            /*Add the First_Bid element*****************************/
            itemsFile.print(strip(getElementTextByTagNameNR(itemElement, "First_Bid")) + colSep);
            /*Now iterate over the next three elements, adding them in turn*/
            for(int j=0; j<itemTags.length;j++){
                itemsFile.print(getElementTextByTagNameNR(itemElement, itemTags[j]));
                itemsFile.print(colSep);
            /*Add the SellerID**************************************/
            itemsFile.print(getElementByTagNameNR(itemElement, "Seller").getAttribute("UserID")
                    + colSep);
            /*Finally, add the description.  Truncate, if necessary*/
            String description = new String();
            description = getElementTextByTagNameNR(itemElement, "Description");
            itemsFile.print(description.substring(0, Math.min(4000, description.length())) + colSep);
            itemsFile.println();
            /*Locate all of the Categories******************************/
            categories = getElementsByTagNameNR(itemElement, "Category");
            /*For every category in this item, write a ItemID-Category pair*/
            for(int j=0; j<categories.length; j++){
                categoriesFile.print(itemID + colSep);
                categoriesFile.println(categories[j].getFirstChild().getNodeValue() + colSep);
            if( (bids = itemElement.getElementsByTagName("Bid")) != null){
                /*Go through the bids, writing the info***********/
                for(int j=0; j<bids.getLength(); j++){
                    thisBid = (Element)bids.item(j);
                    bidsFile.print(getElementByTagNameNR(thisBid, "Bidder").getAttribute("UserID") + colSep);
                    bidsFile.print(itemID + colSep);
                    bidsFile.print(getElementTextByTagNameNR(thisBid, "Time") + colSep);
                    bidsFile.println(strip(getElementTextByTagNameNR(thisBid, "Amount"))
                            + colSep);
            /*write out userid and rating from any and all bidder nodes*/
            if( (bidders = itemElement.getElementsByTagName("Bidder")) != null){
                for(int j=0; j<bidders.getLength(); j++){
                    usersFile.print(bidders.item(j).getAttributes().getNamedItem("UserID").getNodeValue() + colSep);
                    usersFile.print(bidders.item(j).getAttributes().getNamedItem("Rating").getNodeValue() + colSep);
                    //If there's a location node, write it
                    if( (getElementByTagNameNR((Element)bidders.item(j), "Location")) != null){
                        usersFile.print(getElementTextByTagNameNR((Element)bidders.item(j), "Location"));
                    usersFile.print(colSep);
                    //If there's a country node, write it
                    if( (getElementByTagNameNR((Element)bidders.item(j), "Country")) != null){
                        usersFile.print(getElementTextByTagNameNR((Element)bidders.item(j), "Country"));
                    usersFile.println(colSep);
            /*Now write out the Seller information*******************/
            usersFile.print(getElementByTagNameNR(itemElement, "Seller").getAttribute("UserID") + colSep);
            usersFile.print(getElementByTagNameNR(itemElement, "Seller").getAttribute("Rating") + colSep);
            usersFile.print(getElementTextByTagNameNR(itemElement, "Location") + colSep);
            usersFile.print(getElementTextByTagNameNR(itemElement, "Country") + colSep);
            usersFile.println();
        itemsFile.close();
        usersFile.close();
        bidsFile.close();
        categoriesFile.close();
    }

Answer 1

The processing of the DOM is not the problem. Others
use the same code for the DOM and their's work in a
small fraction of the time. I am really stumped on
this one. I've never used a profiler.If you insist that the DOM processing is not the problem then you are going to have to learn to use a profiler.